


motus astrorum ignoro

by thishasbeencary



Series: the alien and the archaeologist [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alien!Makkachin, Alien!Viktor, Alternate Universe - Aliens, Archaeologist!Yuuri, Archaeology, Fluff, Getting Together, Humor, Identity Reveal, M/M, Romance, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-03
Updated: 2019-01-03
Packaged: 2019-10-03 18:42:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17289356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thishasbeencary/pseuds/thishasbeencary
Summary: Weird artifacts keep showing up on Yuuri's most recent dig, like nothing he's ever seen. Viktor is strangely avoidant when Yuuri asks him about them.Turns out, Viktor knows exactly what they are.





	motus astrorum ignoro

**Author's Note:**

> this was written for [aurum](http://vwczine.tumblr.com), for which the theme was aus and gold, so i decided to do an au where viktor was an alien and yuuri was an archaeologist! because ,,, i really love alien!viktor.
> 
> hi, i'm cary, and i watch a lot of ancient aliens bc i'm a conspiracy theorist _and_ a dork.
> 
> title is from juvenal's satires, and it means 'i am ignorant of the movement of the stars' but i thought i was funny using a latin title for a zine with a latin title and for a fic to do with archaeology bc i'm classics Trash
> 
> tysm to [harky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Harky21/pseuds/Harky21) for helping me with the archaeology stuff in this fic. i was making stuff up as i went along that was like half correct from what i knew from classics but harky actually does archaeology and helped me out with better details so thank you <333

“Sit still, Makkachin!” Viktor Nikiforov was wrestling his dog into the dirt, holding her down so that he could tie the bandana around her neck. It was navy blue, with some golden starry pattern on it, just like the bow Viktor always put on her head. “Good girl,” he cooed once Makkachin’s bandana was in place, ruffling his hands through her fur and pressing kisses against her face.

Yuuri didn’t realize he was staring until Viktor looked up to meet his eyes. He immediately turned away, narrowly missing knocking over the bucket of dirt beside him. He coughed as dirt flew into the air and kept his eyes firmly away from Viktor until he heard him sit beside him again.

“Finding anything good today?” Viktor asked, adjusting his hat so that his long bangs were pinned up underneath it. He always wore that stupid hat, everywhere they went. It was required when they were actually _working_ , but Viktor didn’t just wear it when they were working. He wore it when they went to bed, he wore it when they were eating dinner; he was always wearing that  hat. And, somehow, he made the ridiculous hat look unnaturally attractive. The one time that he hadn’t been wearing the hat, he’d been wearing a thick bandana, and his bangs had fallen into his face. Half of his face was hidden, and he could only see out of one eye, but Viktor Nikiforov was still _unfairly_ beautiful.

“Um,” Yuuri answered before swallowing and motioning at what he was uncovering, stuttering for a few seconds before managing, “I think it’s another necklace! It’s gold, like the rest of the stuff here. Really old, too. I’d say maybe a decade older than what we were looking at last month? This dig is _big,_ Viktor.”

“That’s amazing!” Viktor’s voice was… weird. There was some hint of an ingenuine tone that took Yuuri off guard. Viktor was usually nothing but genuine, and excited about everything they were doing the entire time that they had been working there, even if he was not the best archaeologist among them. “What do you think we might find here?”

“I honestly have no idea.” Yuuri hated to admit it, but the rest of the team deserved to know that he was out of his league on this one. “Some of the artifacts make perfect sense but… not all of them. It’s nothing we’ve seen before.” Yuuri ran a hand over his forehead to rid himself of the sweat. It was so hot out, and Yuuri found himself wondering not for the first time how a dog as furry as Makkachin looked perfectly comfortable prancing around just a little bit away from the site. She, of course, was never allowed near where they were digging, but she stayed out in the hot sun with the rest of them, all day every day. At least Viktor remembered to give her plenty of water. “There’s something… different here. Like this!”

Yuuri grabbed one of the artifacts that he had found earlier, a metallic piece that almost looked like… a circuit board? But it wasn’t advanced enough to be anything that they had now, and any sort of wires and switches were noticeably missing from it. “What is that?” Viktor’s voice sounded strained, and Yuuri sighed, shrugging his shoulders.

“It doesn’t match anything else here, yet. Which makes me think there’s something older underneath us, or somewhere nearby. I just feel like… I feel like we’re on top of something big,” Yuuri said, staring at Viktor with wide excited eyes. A smile spread across Viktor’s face, even though slightly more hesitant than usual.

Viktor dragged a hand against his forehead, wiping off sweat that didn’t exist (because, adding to the unfairness of how hot Viktor was, he could sit out here digging all day and never break a sweat), and nearly knocked his hat from his forehead. He clung to the hat, and the gold from the artifact glinted onto his skin, the shine lighting up most of his arm. “You know, Yuuri. I think you’re right. I need to – um – Makkachin needs me!” Viktor jumped up, rushing to his dog, and Yuuri stared at him.

Something weird was going on.

He didn’t have much time to dwell on it before Phichit was coming over to him, clearly having heard at least part of his conversation with Viktor.

“So, aliens! It’s the only explanation, right? I mean, look at that, that’s definitely a circuit board.” Phichit grinned at Yuuri as he took Viktor’s spot across from him, sitting on top of his legs so he could have the best leverage to look at what Yuuri was working on excavating. He overdramatically threw a hand over his forehead, as though he was going to faint. “Aliens, on _our_ dig! How am I supposed to explain myself? I’ll never be a respected archaeologist again! Well, you see, we were digging at the site, but then… there was technology that could _only_ be explained by aliens.”

“Phichit,” Yuuri laughed, tearing his eyes away from Viktor playing with Makkachin and looking back at his friend. “You’re absolutely right, it’s aliens! It’s the only explanation! The skill, the mastery, no ancient civilization could have possibly had this sort of advanced work!”

“I knew it!” Phichit responded, looking at the artifact that they’d set aside for the moment. “I knew we’d be the ones to prove them right, Yuuri. All of those conspiracy theorists, waiting for their chance to have their day. Well, here we are! Giving the conspiracy theorists something to talk about! Betraying the whole field of archaeology. This is why we went into the profession.”

“Of course,” Yuuri laughed. “We definitely didn’t go into archaeology to study the ingenuity and depth of humanity’s knowledge. It was definitely for the aliens.” He shook his head as he started to brush at the dirt again, carefully so he wouldn’t dislodge or break anything that might be hidden. “Seriously, though, Phichit, I think we’ve found something big here. I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s just… weird. Some of this stuff is a lot different than the rest. Like… we’ve got all the artifacts we thought we were going to find, and then there’s stuff like that.” Yuuri gestured at the circuit board again.

“You’re right,” Phichit mused, leaning forward to help Yuuri with the work. “Have you found other pieces like it?”

“Not much. It’s a completely different style than everything else here. I was trying to talk to Viktor about it, but he got all weird when he saw it, and was no help.” Yuuri looked down at it again, turning it over to see if there was something he was missing. Most of the artifacts looked older than this, too. This one just needed to be cleaned, and then it would be fit for a museum. A little muddy, but not corroded or anything like so much of the other metal at their site.

“Is Viktor ever much help in identification? He’s great to have here, but sometimes I wonder how he got his spot. Let me see it more closely,” Phichit said. Yuuri handed over the artifact.

Viktor wasn’t the best archaeologist on their team. He forgot things they learned in undergrad, and acted like this was the first time that he’d ever done field work. He was smart, though, and extremely careful with all of the artifacts. Even if a little forgetful, he was an irreplaceable member of their team. “Weirder than normal, though. It wasn’t just forgetting  words, he just up and left to go with Makkachin. I just… I don’t know. He looked like he knew what it was, but he wouldn’t tell me.”

“You’re reading into Viktor too much again, Yuuri. He probably needed to feed Makkachin or make sure she got enough to drink. I don’t know how she stands it out here with that much fur,” Phichit said, wiping away his own sweat after he’d handed the artifact back to Yuuri. “You’re right about this being different, though.”

“I guess so…” Yuuri stared down at the circuit-board looking artifact for a moment longer before setting it to the side, shrugging his shoulders. “So, what are you thinking, _other_ than aliens?” As much as he and Phichit joked about aliens, they both knew that wasn’t the reason for anything that they found. Ancient civilizations did more than people tended to give them credit for.

“Graverobbers? Or maybe thwarted graverobbers, since the pieces are still here. Another site? You’re definitely right it isn’t normal, but it looks like one of those things that could piece real easily into something bigger. We’ve just gotta look for what it fits with.” Phichit shrugged.

Yuuri nodded. “That’s what I figured too. I don’t know, we’re just getting started in this area, anyway. I just wish it more obviously fit with everything else…” He trailed off, shrugging and looking back up at Phichit. “We’re almost done for the day. Running out of sunlight. Get Viktor and Seung-gil to mark what we can’t get out, then put everything away so we can head in to analyze this stuff.”

“Gotcha!” Phichit bounced up, walking over to the rest of their team and talking to them as Yuuri turned the piece over in his hand a few times. It was fine. If this was something brand new, then that was a good thing. That meant that they had made a discovery that no one had made before. Wasn’t that what he wanted?

Except there was something weird about this piece that Yuuri couldn’t quite place. It didn’t match anything. People had found pieces that looked too technologically advanced to be from ancient civilizations before, but they’d always found something that matched. They went into some intricately detailed piece that made them look much less like technology. They’d missed some detail that they found later on in the process.

Again and again, they found explanations for what was happening, but Yuuri couldn’t see any of them applying. There wasn’t anything big enough structurally for this to fit in, there were no other pieces that even seemed to be made out of the same material. It was golden, like so many other things, but… something about it was different. The metal was harder than most gold they’d found, but still thin, like it was some sort of alloy - unlike anything Yuuri had seen before.

And Yuuri was not about to be the archaeologist that cried alien. No way. It had been a running joke between himself and Phichit the entire time they were in school to try to pick which classmates were most likely to assume ancient aliens when they couldn’t find a logical explanation. Yuuri wasn’t going to be the one to do it. They just had to excavate the rest of the site. Maybe something was deeper down, and this piece got dug up at some point, and so was higher up than the rest?

Now was not the time to panic. They drove back to the dig house, moving the artifacts they’d uncovered that day inside. After they’d finished with the analysis, and dinner, Yuuri finally was able to walk back to his room. He lied down in his bed on his side and stared at the wall, arms wrapped over his chest. He had to stop thinking about this and just get some sleep. He wasn’t doing himself any good thinking about aliens.

He finally cast the thoughts out of his mind when he heard a clicking noise. Yuuri groaned to himself, rubbing sleepy hands over his eyes and walking to his door to see what was going on. He opened it slowly to see...

Viktor’s door had opened across the hall, and Yuuri blinked himself back into being fully awake, tugging on his shoes. What was he doing? Viktor was supposed to be in bed, like the rest of them. Maybe he was taking Makkachin out for an evening walk?

But he’d heard Viktor do this before! He knew that Viktor always took Makkachin on a long walk after they’d finished outside for the day, so she’d be exhausted before they went to bed. It didn’t make sense, then, that Viktor would be taking Makkachin out again, night after night. He could hear Makkachin’s paws against the ground, and he snuck out of his room slowly behind them, trying to stay silent. He didn’t want to get caught, but he had to know what was happening with Viktor.

Once they had gotten out of the area that all of the archaeologists were staying in, Viktor paused, looking around before unclipping Makkachin’s leash and dashing away from the building. He ran… really quickly, but Makkachin kept up easily, of course she did. She was a big dog, and had big enough strides to keep easy pace with a faster-than-average human.

Yuuri didn’t have quite as much luck. It was dark, and he was trying so hard not to trip over his own feet as he ran after Viktor. Viktor stopped right in front of their current site, not even pausing to catch his breath. He looked around, and Yuuri thanked god that there was a wall he could duck behind quickly. As soon as he turned his head, he saw Viktor leaning down, petting Makkachin.

He did _not_ run out to the archaeology site to _pet_ his dog. He could pet his dog anywhere, this was not the time or place for Viktor to play with Makkachin. Yes, Makkachin deserved all of the attention in the world, but she did not deserve all of the attention in the world on top of a bunch of precious artifacts. Oh god. Something was going to break. They were going to roughhouse too much, and Yuuri was going to have to reveal himself because the unit wall collapsed, or they got too close to where they were digging or –

Viktor was leaning down now, saying something to Makkachin as he ruffled at her ears. She was panting, obviously loving the praise, and Yuuri realized more and more that Viktor had definitely come out here to play with his dog. It was… such a Viktor thing to do, and Yuuri couldn’t decide whether to be confused or annoyed. Either way, this wasn’t his place to be. Viktor would be careful. He had to trust Viktor to be careful.

Yuuri started to turn around, until he saw Viktor pull Makkachin’s bow off of her, cooing something at her as he did. As soon as the bow was removed, something sprung up from underneath it. She shook her head a few times, and a bobbing golden light above her caused Yuuri to pause, turning toward them. As she settled down again, something sprung up, emitting a soft golden glow over dog and owner.

Yuuri couldn’t believe his eyes.

It was almost like…

She had antennae?!

Yuuri stood frozen in place as he watched the dog shake her head, the two antennae bobbing above her. She barked loudly, the sound somehow distorted, and Viktor shhed her, laughing even as he did. “We have to be quiet, Makkachin! You know the routine.” He ruffled her fur one more time before pulling off his hat, the hat that he always wore. Because he had to. Because they were archaeologists.

He thought that was the reason Viktor always wore the hat. That reason made sense. Yuuri wore a hat too. The same hat, even. Because they were archaeologists. That’s why Viktor wore the hat.

Not because…

Yuuri was going to be sick.

Viktor _also_ had antennae, long glowing golden appendages extending from his head, almost stuck in his hair. He shook his head a few times until his hair fell into his eyes, his antennae hanging a little looser, sticking up more, curling near the top.

Yuuri looked away to try to catch his breath (and his _sanity_ ), and in that time, Viktor had rolled the sleeves of his shirt up, exposing his glowing veins beneath his skin. He was _glowing_. Viktor was literally glowing, illuminating the entire area that he and Makkachin were standing in. The soft light that had been coming from Makkachin’s antennae was nothing compared to what they looked like now.

“You ready to go to the ship?” he cooed at the dog, and Yuuri breathed out slowly. The _ship_. The ship!? Why would Viktor have a ship? Because Yuuri knew for a fact he did not mean a boat, because they were nowhere near a reasonable amount of water, and he wouldn’t have taken Makkachin out to the middle of the forest in order to take her to his boat. The only other kind of ship that Yuuri could think of was, well, a spaceship. Like the kind in science fiction.

The kind that aliens had.

 _Oh no._ Viktor was… an alien. Viktor was an _alien_.

Suddenly, all of the terrible moments trying to get Viktor to figure out archaeology, trying to figure out why he knew nothing about _humans_ sometimes, made so much more sense. He wasn’t human. He was an alien, which meant that everything Yuuri had ever believed about the world and about archaeology was wrong. This sure gave the conspiracy theorists something to talk about. Aliens. On _his_ dig. All of those times an archaeologist had gone to painstaking lengths to explain how something was made by humans, they were wrong. Aliens were real. These were alien artifacts on Yuuri’s site. That was _Viktor’s_ circuit board.

That’s why he had been so confused, why he had left so quickly when Yuuri showed it to him. He was trying to save himself. He didn’t want anyone to figure out what he was.

Were they infiltrating all the archaeologists?

Viktor walked past where they were working, into the more heavily covered area of trees. He walked straight up to the edge of the clearing, pulling something out of his pocket and aligning it with the tree. Both started to glow, the same soft golden light that Viktor was glowing. He stepped away, and two large doors came out from the trees, opening wide to expose the inside of something ( _A spaceship_ , Yuuri knew, _this was Viktor’s spaceship_ ). Makkachin excitedly dashed into the open doors. Viktor laughed, following after her.

And Yuuri took his chance.

He _ran_ , but the doors were closed before he got there, and he stood outside of the tree, panting. Everything looked… just as it always had. There was no way to tell that there was a _spaceship_ for an alien hiding among the trees that they had been working in all summer. Maybe he was hallucinating. Was he hallucinating? Was this some terrible dream? But, no. He pinched himself, even as he felt cliché doing it, and he sank onto the ground, shaking his head. No. There was something solid behind his back. Something solid and metallic, and definitely not a tree that made Yuuri question everything that he’d ever done as an archaeologist. Viktor’s _ship_ was solid behind his back, where he and his alien dog and who knows what else were doing… something.

Yuuri fell to his knees in front of the door, catching his breath and just… trying not to panic. What were they doing? Was Viktor trying to… trying to kidnap them or something? Was it the same alien plot as always? Aliens came to infiltrate earth, pretended to be humans and blend in to get enough intel so that they could have the perfect invasion. Alien makes friends with humans to be safe, and then leads his kind to take them over, or takes a human to his kind to be a prisoner of war or –

Oh _god_ , Viktor was an alien.

Yuuri’s face lit up at the memory of all of the times he had thought about how gorgeous Viktor was. (He wasn’t even letting himself think about the fact that he’d thought that Viktor was _also_ cute with antennae. That was just… not a thought that he could be having right now. Not if he wanted to keep breathing.) He was interested in an _alien_ . He had a crush on someone that wasn’t even human. God, this wasn’t fair. He thought that he had a _chance_ with Viktor, since Viktor had seemed to be flirting with him for all of that time. Was he just completely misreading him? Was it just Viktor not understanding?

Oh god. Was he Viktor’s target to kidnap?

That probably made knocking a bad idea.

Too late.

Yuuri raised his hand and banged it against the tree, feeling ridiculous, even though he at least imagined the ring of metal beneath his fist. He stood in silence, staring at an incredibly normal tree. He had definitely hallucinated, he decided, because there was no way that a tree could ring out with a metallic noise. He was going crazy. He stood up, starting to back away from the trees; he would blame it on a lack of sleep. But then a noise started, a whirring noise that signaled the opening of the doors.

Well. Here it was. Here was where Yuuri Katsuki got kidnapped by an alien and was never seen again. At least he lived his dream for a little while. He was a great archaeologist while it lasted, and at least the alien that kidnapped him was cute, unless he’d grown tentacles and a hundred eyes or something when he went into the ship. It was fine. He’d lived a long life, twenty-four was pretty good, especially for all that he’d done. He wished he had time to tell his family what was happening, or at least Phichit, but maybe he’d make it back. Someone would find a way to bring him back, right? Humans always won the war against aliens in the movies, he really hoped that that was true for –

“Yuuri?” Oh god that was Viktor. Yuuri raised his eyes from the ground slowly, just praying he didn’t see tentacles and he… didn’t. He saw _Viktor_ , still slightly glowing, but he’d put on a new shirt, a nearly transparent one. His antennae were sticking straight up on his head, and Makkachin was standing by his side, a toy held in her mouth, like they had been playing. “How did you get here?”

“I… uh…” Yuuri felt strangely dizzy, and he was pretty sure that it was the panic working its way through his entire body. He wrapped his arms around himself, trying to keep breathing. “I couldn’t sleep. And I heard you and Makkachin in the hallway, so it sounded like a good idea to take a jog, and then I saw you two, and you were _glowing_ and – “ He breathed out. He had to get this over with. “Are you an alien?”

Viktor blinked, staring at him, and Yuuri tried not to think of the way that his antennae bobbed above his head as adorable. “I think you should come inside,” Viktor answered in lieu of an _actual_ answer, but Yuuri still nodded, shakily stepping into the ship. Makkachin immediately bounded into his legs and Yuuri yelped, falling to the ground, even though this was far from the first time Makkachin demanded that they play in that way. He was just… a little… off balance over this whole “the cute boy you’ve been crushing on is an alien – also you’re about to screw up all of archaeology with this find” going through his head.

“Makkachin, down,” Viktor commanded, and Makkachin stepped back, barking in confusion. Viktor scratched at her head. “Later, okay? Me and Yuuri have to talk, then we can play.” Makkachin somehow seemed appeased by that, even though Viktor had spoken far more than the few key words the dog should understand.

Yuuri just had to focus so he didn’t end up vomiting all over Viktor’s nice, pristine spaceship. That would… look, he was going to go out on a limb and hope that Viktor was a friendly alien and not out to probe him for freaky-alien-science and then kidnap him and hold him ransom. If Viktor had wanted to do that, he had plenty of opportunities. He was just going to hope that Viktor was a…. friendly neighborhood alien. Who happened to be pretending to be an archaeologist. He still didn’t think that he’d take kindly to Yuuri throwing up in his ship.

“So… you and Makkachin…” Yuuri started, because he had to start. If he didn’t start, he was going to lose his nerve and flee the ship before he got any answers. Viktor and Makkachin. That had to be enough of a cue for what he was asking, right? Just in case it wasn’t, Yuuri tried to further his question, waving at the two of them, especially focusing on Viktor’s antennae. “You two are… um…”

“Aliens!” Viktor answered cheerfully, hopping back up to a standing position and offering his hands to Yuuri. Yuuri shakily took them and didn’t let go at first, holding on to try to steady him in this. “I mean, in the way that we’re not humans. Which is what you mean. From space! I crash-landed here. A little. My ship is mostly functional but I blew her engines and the cloaking, and probably a few other things I haven’t figured out yet, so we hid her here. I’m still trying to gather up all of the pieces that fell off when we were crashing.” Viktor frowned. “I misjudged Earth’s altitude and atmospheric composition and… pieces started falling off.”

“So the weird artifacts, they’re all your fault,” Yuuri murmured, letting out a sigh of relief. “Are you the only alien with us? Please tell me you are. And these are recent, right? You’re not like… thousands of years old, and all of the archaeologists who have been disproving aliens for years are wrong?”

“As far as I know, I’m the only alien who has interrupted an archaeologist, actually, unless another species beat us to it and hasn’t said anything, I’m the first to come to Earth!” Viktor smiled at Yuuri. “I didn’t mean to pretend to be an archaeologist, but I was looking for ways to be able to pick up the pieces I’d lost, and I saw your team was coming here and… I decided it was my chance!”

“Oh thank god,” Yuuri whispered, pressing his hands over his face. “I thought I was going to have to question my entire field because a cute alien happened to sneak onto my dig the first time I lead field research.” Yuuri then looked up with flushed cheeks, ducking his head down. Viktor had definitely caught that.

He’d called the alien cute. Viktor made an excited noise under his breath, bouncing on his heels. “A cute alien?”

Yeah, of course Viktor had heard it. It wasn’t like Yuuri had been talking softly to try to hide what he had just said, anyway. But… Since Viktor had heard… This was his best chance. Before he doubted it or had an existential crisis about the fact that he was about to do this with someone that wasn’t _human_. He could have all of these crises later. For now…

Yuuri stood on his tiptoes, throwing himself toward Viktor with a kiss. Viktor gasped, his arms falling around Yuuri’s waist to hold them both up. As Yuuri dared reopen his eyes, Viktor was glowing, much brighter than before, and he was smiling widely. “Yuuri!” He leaned down to kiss Yuuri again, long enough to let Yuuri loop his arms around his neck. “I didn’t know if you’d still want to kiss me after you found out I wasn’t human.”

“You knew I wanted to kiss you before?” Yuuri turned red, burying his face against Viktor’s neck. He could have the moral dilemma about kissing an alien later, for now, he was just happy to feel Viktor’s arms wrap around his waist, shaking softly with laughter.

“You told Makkachin,” he explained. Or, well, he said like it was an explanation. And, yes, Yuuri had told Makkachin a few times about how much he wanted to kiss her human (who now turned out to be very much not a human, but that wasn’t the problem right now).

“That doesn’t explain why _you_ know,” Yuuri answered, looking up to meet Viktor’s eyes. Viktor’s very normal, very human blue eyes. Did all aliens look this human? Yuuri had so many questions to ask Viktor after he had settled into this truth a little bit more.

“Oh, we’re…” Viktor paused, obviously trying to figure out how to explain before he reached up, tugging a little bit on his antennae. “These, they connect us. Family can sense… some of each other’s thoughts? Especially about each other. So you told Makkachin you wanted to kiss me, and she heard the words and got excited by my name, and so… I heard you say you wanted to kiss me.”

“Oh my god,” Yuuri whispered, trying to think if he’d said anything more embarrassing to Makkachin than just wanting to kiss Viktor. Anything else that Viktor might have heard him telling his dog in confidence that Viktor would never hear it.

“I thought it was cute! I wanted to tell you that I wanted to kiss you too, but I didn’t know how to say that without saying that I’d heard you say to Makkachin that you wanted to kiss me so… I’m glad you made the first move! And you know about me now!” Viktor said excitedly, kissing Yuuri again and hugging him close to himself.

“I can’t believe your dog telepathically told you that I wanted to kiss you,” Yuuri mumbled, but laughed after he had. Something so ridiculous could only happen with someone like Viktor. He kissed him again, and again, and again, until Yuuri wasn’t sure how much time had passed and Makkachin had left the room, no longer interested in whatever they were doing.

“We need to go back, before someone realizes we’re both missing. And we need to make sure we get plenty of sleep,” Yuuri mumbled, resting his head against Viktor’s shoulder and closing his eyes. The warmth of his skin still radiated against his body, reminding Yuuri that the man he was holding onto was giving off bright golden light, but he didn’t think about that right now. Right now, he thought about how nice it was to have Viktor in his arms, and how he’d have to give that up for a little while. He was definitely _not_ going to sleep well tonight, but they didn’t need two exhausted archaeologists tomorrow.

Viktor nodded, separating himself from Yuuri and calling out to Makkachin, who walked over. He fixed his own hat on his head first, tying it down so his antennae were pinned tight above his head before leaning down to soothe Makkachin into letting her antennae fall flat, using the bandana and bow to hold them down. It was pink today, light pink dotted by little golden hearts.

“You won’t tell anyone, right?” Viktor slipped a collar onto Makkachin, ruffling her fur before standing back up, grabbing the shirt he had been wearing before he came onto his ship, sliding it on overtop of his transparent one, focusing on doing up the buttons correctly. “That I’m… not human?”

“And risk being laughed out of my career? Or making it not safe for you?” Yuuri shook his head, walking forward to kiss Viktor softly again. He almost missed the golden glow beneath his hands, now covered by his much thicker shirt. “It’s our secret.”

“Thank you,” Viktor whispered, his face lighting up into a bright smile. He tugged Yuuri into a deep kiss before typing something into a pad on the side of the ship, which caused the door to slide open.

They stepped out of the ship hand in hand, Makkachin walking at their feet.

No, he wouldn’t tell the world that Viktor was an alien. He’d find some way to explain away the circuitry. Maybe it was an unknown cult? Ancient civilizations were involved in all sorts of cults, it would be far from unusual to find an artifact that was definitely not an alien, but just from some cult ritual. No one would find out that Viktor wasn’t human, not without Viktor telling them himself.

They might find out that Viktor was his boyfriend, though. That was much harder to hide. Especially as the two snuck back into Yuuri’s bunk together, curled in his bed with arms wrapped around each other and Makkachin asleep at their feet.

Yuuri slid his hand underneath Viktor’s shirt, resting it against the warm golden glow of his heart.

So Viktor was an alien.

But he was also Yuuri’s boyfriend.

One of those was clearly more important to the other.

(But that didn’t stop Yuuri from freaking out about the other the next time Viktor took him in his ship.)

**Author's Note:**

> if you liked this verse, stay tuned! my fic for [okaeri's ](http://yoihomezine.tumblr.com)nsfw love hotel edition is actually the same verse, in which yuuri finds out just how much viktor glows ;) and i've had this idea for a While so i wouldn't be surprised if i ended up tacking on a few other small stories, especially if people are interested.
> 
> thank you so much for reading! kudos/comments/bookmarks are always super appreciated <3 i love to know what you're thinking!
> 
> my tumblr is [yoyoplisetsky](http://yoyoplisetsky.tumblr.com) and my twitter is [thishasbeencary](https://twitter.com/thishasbeencary).


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